Reflect Essay Essay

Custom StudentMr.
TeacherENG
1001-04
2 October 2016

Reflect Essay

A role play activity took place in our tutorial 3. My role was Pat Taylor who is an experienced employee in a medium-sized company. However, Pat does not like all the company rules. Therefore, as Pat, I tried to persuade Dale, the new department manager, that it is unnecessary to wear safety glasses all the time. As a consequence, Dale 1 won the negotiation and I reached a win-win result with Dale 2. This essay will reflect my performances in two negotiations and share my personal insights on the activity.

To start with an evaluation of this activity provides me some ideas on my natural preferences for different types of influencing tactics in terms of pressure, coalition building and legitimized appeal tactic. Then I will make a comparison between my previously assumption and what I have learnt from this activity. After that, I will indicate what I will do based on the knowledge I have learnt. Furthermore, this essay will present my confusions and difficulties about this role play. Additionally, I would like to explore the way Dale persuaded me in our negotiation.

The final part will conclude my reflective thinking. Firstly, I would like to evaluate of my insights on pressure, coalition building and legitimized appeal tactics. According to my previously experience, coalition building tactic always works when I negotiate with others. For example, workers fight for their rights through demonstrations. I used to unify my neighbors to negotiate with a construction company because they made noises in the midnight, we won that negotiation at last.

However, in the first conversation with Dale, when I said the rest of the workers in my department do not want to wear safety glasses as well. Dale told me that wearing glasses is a company policy and other worker already agreed with it. Moreover, I will result in a mandatory one-week suspension if I do not follow this policy. After consideration, I compromised. Therefore, this activity makes me realize that coalition building does not work sometimes, especially when another person takes pressure and legitimized appeal tactics.

Secondly, I present the comparison and connection between what I am learning and my prior knowledge. To begin with what I mentioned before, it does not always work when I use the coalition building tactic to negotiate with an authority, which is not as same as my assumption. Because it could use organizational punishments and policies to enforce me to follow the rules, which is called legitimized appeal tactic. In addition, according to my second conversation, I found that the result of using lots of logic and reason to convince another person is better than my expectation.

Additionally, based on what I learnt, I plan to take different influence tactics towards different people. More specifically, when I negotiate with my supervisor, I could use not only coalition building but also rationality tactic. For example, because of my failure in the first negotiation, I changed my tactic when I talked to the second Dale. I tried to convince him that I am an experienced worker, I know when it is necessary to wear the glasses. Moreover, people would take more chances when wearing glasses. Finally, we reached an agreement, which is better than the first meet.

Similarly, I could use pressure and legitimized appeal tactics when I negotiate with subordinates. Furthermore, there are some confusions and difficulties about this class activity. After read the role description for Pat, I have no idea how to persuade Dale, because in my opinion, Pat should wear glasses if he is really care about his own safety. Thus, I did not have a clear position at the beginning, so that I performed not well in the first negotiation. After my group members and tutor explained to me, I understand Pat’s situation and rethink the tactics.

Finally, I would like to explore two different ways that Dale persuaded me in the role play. The first Dale had a tough position, which is wearing glasses is compulsory. He convinced me through pressure and policy. Even though I compromised, but it would have negative influence on our working relationship. By contrast, the second Dale listened to my opinions first and show respect to my experiences. In addition, he persuaded me from my safety because he knows that I want to enjoy being with my two grandchildren.

The second Dale’s tactic leaded to a win–win result, so that if I were Dale, I would convince others in the same way. In conclusion, even though I have confusions and difficulties about this activity, and I did not performed very well in the first negotiation, but because of reflective thinking, I have learnt a lot from this role play. Specifically, when we are in a negotiation, we should show respect to another person’s opinion and experience firstly, then taking different influence tactics according to the person and situations.